Friday, 27 September 2013

Sinsy

Short for Singing voice Synthesis, Sinsy is another Vocaloid-like approach to exactly what it says on the tin: synthesizing singing. It works via a web-based interface, and has what appear to be be a form of voicebanks, including English by Xiang-Ling, and there is at least one other (as Xiang-Ling is numbered f002). This, along with Vocaloid and UTAU, means there are at least three such methods available. Until today, I was unaware of this one.

It is said that the system requires 'no manual adjustments', unlike the tuning that is often needed in Vocaloid editing, for example. Sinsy works via a web-based interface, and can also interpret MusicXML musical scores. Sinsy-ready MusicXMLs can be created in programs such as MuseScore, Cadencii or Finale NotePad.

In this first English language Sinsy demo, it is Xiang-Ling's English voicebank f002e that performs Lennon and McCartney's truly timeless classic Yesterday, and although it isn't perfect it is certainly very clear and near-enough unaccented British English. The minor issues with this demo seem to relate to the 'glitches' that at least one user of the system has reported, even though that system is now up to version 3.3 so should really have had the kinks worked out of it by now.

Despite the (relatively few) negatives, the system shows great promise, and I suspect just needs more work on the underlying web-based editor and/or the voicebanks. It is already impressive; and hopefully limitations such as the five-minute duration cap willat least be extended in time. After all, the last two songs for which I wrote the lyrics are each over five minutes long...